ART AND THE GOVERNMENT A federal judge recently ruled that Pandora must continue to pay ASCAP, which represents song writers and publishers, a 1.85% composition royalty. It was a (not entirely clean) victory for Pandora, which was arguing against a rise to 3%. The Future of Music Coalition has a good primer on the issue.Read More

ART AND THE GOVERNMENT A consortium of City of Detroit creditors have made the first legal move towards pressuring the Detroit Institute of Arts to sell city-owned artworks to help pay for debts owed. Executive Vice President Annemarie Erickson defends the museum against Emergency Manager Kevyn Orr’s demand that the museum find one way orRead More

ART AND THE GOVERNMENT The National Endowment for the Arts has shared a draft of its strategic plan for FY14-18, and in what I believe may be a first, is inviting public comment on it via SurveyMonkey. Ah, these modern times we live in. Now let’s just hope House Republicans don’t succeed in slashing itsRead More

Recently, Clayton Lord has been fomenting lots of discussion about race and audiences on his blog, New Beans. Diane Ragsdale has much to say in response, bringing in a recent Nina Simon post about the Irvine Foundation’s Exploring Engagement Fund (which has racial undertones but is not solely about diversifying audiences). Most recently, Barry Hessenius dove into the frayRead More

IN THE FIELD RIP Artnet Magazine; more here. I will always be grateful to Artnet’s Ben Davis for being just about the only arts journalist worth his salt during the whole Yosi Sergant debacle. Congratulations to GiveWell, which has announced a not-quite-merger with Good Ventures, an emerging foundation led by Cari Tuna and Dustin Moskovitz (the latter is one of theRead More

SUMMARY WolfBrown’s 2008 Cultural Engagement in California’s Inland Regions, commissioned by The James Irvine Foundation and written by Alan Brown and Jennifer Novak (now known as Jennifer Novak-Leonard) with Amy Kitchener, aims to provide a broad view of how residents in California’s Inland Empire and Central Valley regions engage with the arts. These regions areRead More

Over the last decade, you’ve probably known someone who took up dance or music classes, or maybe someone who joined a knitting or craft group, or started a novel. According to a 2008 NEA study, 74 percent of Americans participate in the arts through attendance, art creation, or media. Whether you call it the Pro-AmRead More

Each year, Createquity offers a list of the top ten arts policy stories of the past 12 months. You can read the 2009 and 2010 editions here and here, respectively. In addition to the main list, I also identify my favorite new arts blogs that started within the past year. The list, like the blog,Read More

On October 24, I was invited to be one of three official bloggers for the one-day Beyond Dynamic Adaptability conference in San Francisco, along with Clay Lord and Adam Fong, whose contributions you can read at the links above. (Disclosure: that means I was paid to write this post, but no one associated with theRead More